


Edit Undo

by Ma_Kir



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 20:18:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10815972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: Barry Allen thwarts the greatest threat to the timeline, and finally defeats his ultimate enemy. Cisco Ramon has to live with the consequences.





	Edit Undo

You know how they say life doesn't have an undo button?

Well, it doesn't. Not for me.

Especially not after losing my best friend.

It's no _Memento_. I'm no Guy Pearce starting the story backwards. That was never me. I never went _Back to the Future_. That was all Barry. That ... could have been Barry. I'm sure that Douglas Adams has a whole lot of temporal, time travel verbs and nouns and things, or it's all in the timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly stuff that a Time Lord watches with 4D glasses, but only a bigger nerd than I would know for sure. No. Me, I'm more ... it's more like looking at someone's grain, their record of memories, from "The Entire History of You," but now it's my memories and I'm pretty sure _Black Mirror_ is not a set of alt realities I want to visit. My life is already surreal enough as is.

I'm geeking out a lot. I can see that. I mean, I do it anyway. But now I just do it all the time, because I'm hurting and I can't tell anyone why. I mean, that's not exactly true. I can tell everyone why. Nothing's stopping me, except looking like I'm crazy. 

But having superpowers is already crazy enough, I guess.

The particle accelerator explosion screwed a lot of us over in Central City. Caitlin, Ronnie, and Wally of course. Then, there's me. It happened in 2020. Hindsight, am I right? Yeah ... well, at least I still have my day job. STAR Labs was doing great and, despite everything, it still is. I mean, someone has to clean up the unintentional mistake we made. Dr. Wells is doing good damage control, and with Wally's help and ... mine, he's been doing the work of three, well, Wellses. Harry is a bit of a grump, though he gets along with Dr. Wells pretty good enough. It doesn't help, or hurt, that Wally and Jesse are closer than the Skywalker twins, minus the unintentional and didn't really happen incest. Nah, they are a couple of good kids and they do well for each other. 

H.R., and I don't mean Human Resources, can get old fast. Caitlin and Ronnie generally get him off my back. I feel bad sometimes. I know he means well and, you know, he's actually a better public relations person when talking to Central City's finest or the media. Iris ... Iris West stops by here a lot, along with Joe, to help Team Flash. Wally's ... Wally's been coming along fine. It's been rocky. At least he's gotten to a point where we can jail the Rival without him risking his life like some kind of Anakin Skywalker. Damn. That was a bad example, given what happened ... what could have happened?

Maybe he's more like a bit of Luke really. You are reckless, I told him like a little green muppet. But between the Wellses ... and Jay, like I said he's coming along fine. Joe and Iris get us cases to work on. Hell, even Julian's working here on our Metahuman knowledge base. 

Between me, Professor Stein, and Ronnie we've been able to help Caitlin too. There's a Killer Frost on our Earth, but she's accepted who she is. She is not the power consuming her all loco, but she is the power. Girl power! Yeah. Caitlin told me not to do that again, so I know she's fine now. It was a close one though, a few times. The Dominators still ... I mean, they sensed time being meddled with ... But we handled that. And before that, there was Earth-Two and Hunter Zolomon. That's where we met Harry and Jesse. I dated another Vibe for a time, Gypsy. Between her and Golden Glider ... yeah. It's amazing I haven't died from my weird love life alone. Well, at least none of them remember past memories from past lives that suddenly make them go off with strange stalker guys. 

Nah. I'm still not bitter about that. I mean, Dante did worse. He's fine, by the way. He's turned his life around. A grandstanding pianist as always, but believe it or not he's actually more fun to be around now. I guess having powers -- which I didn't hide very well -- didn't hurt. Everything's complicated, but everything's good. Team Flash is doing some good work. We're busting the bad guys before and after breakfast. We're good. I'm good.

But my best friend is still gone.

I always know about it. Nature of Vibing, I guess. It all came back after the accident of '20. Or it was always there. But every time we're all together. Every time I see Jay look at me with that pity in his eyes. Even the Legends, who're a bit different now, who didn't touch this with a forty foot pole, act awkward around me. It's not as bad anymore. I think they are beginning to forget. Retroactive memory, or something like that. We never even had a visit from a man in a yellow suit, but ... given what happened and how everything is connected in a way that would piss off both Mystics and Skeksis, it ... makes sense.

It hurts most of all when I see Joe. Sometimes, he talks about his friends -- the Allens -- and how Henry's practice is doing well and how he and Caitlin should compare medical notes. A nice couple. The Allens like spending time with Iris and Wally. I met them. They've all been neighbours for ages. 

Spending time with them is like having children of their own, they said. 

I'd call it feels, like the cool kids do, but ... I just can't. I can't. 

I just don't get how he did it. 

I mean, it wouldn't have taken much. It's one of those darned, recursive loops. It's hard to remember why I didn't just Vibe where he was, and get Wally or Jesse to bring me back in time. Back to the 1970s. Barry was sitting there, on a park bench. I was able to talk with him. Maybe he did something to keep other Speedsters from getting there first. He could be pretty good at improvising. Better than Wally in a lot of ways. He used to be all wild with his powers too. But after a while he got more finesse. Playing the string theory. 

It was after, well before, but after Savitar, and revealing who he was ... and what he did. 

I tried. I tried giving him the pep-talk. I told him what he was doing was pointless. I mean, he's ... he was? He is? He's part of the Speed Force. He's not affected by the flow of normal time like the rest of us. It was after he realized he was the first Speedster. Or, more likely, it was Eddie Thawne. Either was what helped him come up with this, I'm sure of it. But I thought it was pointless. Dangerous. I mean, time was just going to reset itself or something. And even if he didn't, he would still exist as Remnants, unless the Time Wraiths got him first. Hell,, I'm still surprised we haven't found a man in yellow yet being all nefarious and stealing Big Belly Burgers while retroactively killing people in other dimensions. 

But he didn't care. He said that he finally knew what the greatest threat to space and time finally was. He knew _who_ that was.

He blamed himself. And I don't mean just for Flashpoint and making it so that I'd never been rich with a woman on either arm. He was talking about Eobard Thawne, aforementioned man in yellow killing Wells, and making the accelerator in 2014. How he had inspired and turned Eobard into a vindictive, creepy stalkerish time-travelling fanboy that wanted to destroy the image he loved. How he killed his parents because of him. How everyone was threatened just by being around him. How he refused to change time and Ronnie died. How Eddie killed himself before that. How he changed time and made Caitlin become Killer Frost. How Julian became a puppet of Savitar ... because of him. 

How Dante died because of him.

He said he was a hypocrite. That he knew this was wrong. But he spent some time with Gideon, who in this case was about as useful as the Microsoft Word Paperclip, a nerd reference probably lost on many after '20, and much less cute. He figured, based on some maths and statistics, that Wally would be affected by the accelerator and changed. How STAR Labs would take responsibility. We would get our powers and band together. Earth-1 would still have a Flash and a Team Flash. That was enough for him.

But that's not what it was all really about. A lot of it was. After we argued, a lot, on this scary, scary insane plan: after I tried to talk him out of it, reminding him I didn't blame him for Dante anymore, he told me that I was letting him off the hook. That he was the greatest threat to the timeline. That he'd seen what happens to him after Savitar wins, one way or another. How I would lose my hands to Caitlin. 

But when that failed, he just stared me down with this ... really sad smile, and told me that he couldn't live in a reality where he killed the woman he loved, alternate, future version, or no. 

Then, it was just like ... Thawne. Barry was beginning to turn into ... golden confetti. I told him to stop it, that this was no _Kung-Fu Panda_ situation and there were no rose pedals and he was faster than a turtle. He actually laughed, something we'd have both shared if he wasn't ... disintegrating, dressed in a dress jacket like he was enjoying a warm summer day. Which it was, in the 1970s Central City. He said that he met his dad, here, a med student and told him to meet Nora, the girl he was seeing, his future wife, Barry's ... mom, a few days from now: that he had another extra shift at the Hospital. 

Fucking _Butterfly Effect_. 

One little change. Between Barry meeting his mom and telling her Henry would see her later, and meeting Henry and arranging that extra shift. They would still meet, but ... it was a calculated risk that Barry created based on a self-aware program with a lack of self-awareness that he would make in the future ... and know never will. That onus came on me. 

Further, he must have read that _Watchmen_ I lent him. Like a young Adrian Veidt, he told me he already told his Time Remnants about what was happening. That they'd agreed to do nothing when the Wraiths came for them. If the Wraiths even needed to. 

Barry was smiling. You know, for the first time in our whole time together, I don't think I'd ever seen him so ... happy? No. He'd been happy when Iris was around. It wasn't joy. It was too sad for that. I think ... I think it was peace. Barry was slowly unraveling in front of me, like he had never been there, and I was crying and I knew there was nothing I could now. He told me he was sorry for meddling with time, one more time, but that this time he was willing to pay the consequences: even if the Speed Force took him into itself and made him relive the worst moments of his life. But, he said, this would not be one of them. 

He said, Savitar may have created himself, but he was going to destroy him. That Iris would live. That Eddie Thawne had been a greater hero than he would ever be. I can't believe how stupid that was. I wanted to slap him. But I was too busy crying. Then ... then he said, before he was gone, to tell me that I was better friend to him than he deserved, and that he loved me. 

And then, he was gone. 

It hurts seeing Iris and Eddie. A part of me screams that it should be Barry there. I see Joe with Iris and Wally, and feel the missing third kid that should be there. I look at Team Flash and everyone who's here now, and all I can think about is my best friend who erased himself from existence, that stupid, stupid dumbass who did this, risking us all again, throwing himself away, because he just couldn't face the evil, the messed up thing he could have become and how peaceful and accepting he'd been about it. It's too much to bear.

And if I told anyone about this, aside from Jay and maybe Gypsy and the Legends ... they'd think I was crazy. How can you mourn someone who never existed? Who erased themselves from existence? Whose parents, friends, and the woman they loved doesn't even remember who they are because they had never met them? 

How do you explain that you are the only one who remembers? And worse: know that even with your power, you might make things even more messed up if you try to change it. I think about Dante, and my friends, and my life. And I know that he knows I won't change it. And I kind of hate him for that. For his selfishness. And I kind of hate myself for that ... for my own. 

Goddamn undo buttons. If only there was a clipboard somewhere, here ... with a name. The Flash. Barry Allen.  My amigo. Barry. 

 

 


End file.
